Twitter is swiftly becoming one of the worlds leading forms of social media.

On a personal level Twitter can be used as a means of documenting your thoughts, making social commentary and engaging with people you don’t know by commenting on similar thread, often indicated through the use of a hashtag.

Twitter allows you 140 characters of space in which to express your message. It’s a bit like sending a one page text message. By limiting the characters Twitter forces you to be creative with your messaging, however much like all other forms of social networks you can include links to stories you like, YouTube videos, articles etc. and you can upload images.

Hashtags are a simple way of giving a topic to what you are talking about e.g. #diamondjubilee #euro2012 If you are looking to engage with people who are talking about the same topic as you, you can search the hashtag then read and comment on other peoples tweets relating to this subject. This is a great way to engage with people with similar interests. In order to constantly have their tweets appear on your feed, all you have to do is follow them.

Hashtags are great for businesses too. If you’re a butcher in Portsmouth for example, you can search for #bbq and #Portsmouth. This will list every person who has tweeted about having a bbq in Portsmouth. You can engage with them by sending a tweet saying ‘We have the best burgers in town, 75p each or 6 for £4!’ #bbq #Portsmouth’

Alternatively say you are a letting agent, you can search for people using the words ‘letting’ or ‘house hunting’ or ‘renting’ in their tweets and follow them. It will alert them to your services and may in return get you a client and them a property.

Twitter is fantastic as it is an open platform. You can engage with everyone without having to befriend them or even follow them. It is a great way to see what your competition are up to, what the popularity of new businesses you are looking to work with is or the popularity of an event, product or service is.

As far as social media goes, there is nowhere more social. Everyone from Celebs to Politicians and Businesses to Brands tweet regularly, it is a great way to personalise yourself to your customers as well as raise brand awareness. Twitter is also one of the fastest ways to spread a message. This is how it works….

If you tweet, ‘Party at the beach, Friday at 9pm. Spread the word,’ your followers will then retweet it to all their followers and so on and so on. When Beyonce announced she was pregnant at the MTV VMAs, 8,868 tweets were sent every second, meaning the whole world knew in next to no time.

Twitter is a multi-faceted social media vehicle which allows you to connect on a personal and business level, globally.